Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Nagesh Belludi

Inspirational Quotations #884

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The best way to fill time is to waste it.
—Marguerite Duras (French Novelist, Playwright)

The test is to recognize the mistake, admit it and correct it. To have tried to do something and failed is vastly better than to have tried to do nothing and succeeded.
—Dale Turner (American Congregational Priest)

Humor is something that thrives between man’s aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.
—Victor Borge (Danish-American Comedian, Musician)

A person of definite character and purpose who comprehends our way of thought is sure to exert power over us. He cannot altogether be resisted; because, if he understands us, he can make us understand him, through the word, the look, or other symbol.
—Charles Cooley (American Sociologist)

A purified mind can grasp anything. It can dive deep into the subtlest subject and understand even transcendental things.
—Sivananda Saraswati (Hindu Spiritual Teacher)

If you’ve truly committed yourself to something, given it all you’ve got, and then concluded that it is not for you—move on to something else.
—Susan Jeffers (American Self-Help Author)

Love lives on. Those we love are never really lost to us. We feel them in so many special ways—through friends they always cared about and dreams they left behind, in beauty that they added to our days, in words of wisdom we still carry with us, and memories that never will be gone. Those we love are never really lost to us—for everywhere their special love lives on.
—Amanda Bradley (American Poet)

Potter is jealous of potter, and craftsman of craftsman; and the poor have a grudge against the poor, and the poet against the poet.
—Hesiod (Greek Poet)

The greater perfection a soul aspires after, the more dependent it is upon Divine Grace.
—Brother Lawrence (French Carmelite Monk)

Aim at a high mark and you will hit it. No, not the first time, nor the second, and maybe not the third. But keep on aiming and keep on shooting. Finally you’ll hit the bull’s-eye of success, for only practice will make you perfect.
—Annie Oakley (American Markswoman)

From religion comes a man’s purpose; from science, his power to achieve it. Sometimes people ask if religion and science are not opposed to one another. They are: in the sense that the thumb and fingers of my hand are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped.
—William Lawrence Bragg (British Physicist)

Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself.
—Upton Sinclair (American Novelist, Social Reformer)

Tylenol Made a Hero of Johnson & Johnson: A Timeless Crisis Management Case Study

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Crisis needn’t strike a company solely because of its own neglect or disaster. Sometimes, situations emerge where the company can’t be blamed—but the company realizes quickly that it’ll get much blame if it fumbles the ball in its crisis-response.

Ever since cyanide-laced Extra-Strength Tylenol killed seven people in Chicago in 1982, corporate boards and business school students have studied the response of Johnson & Johnson (J&J,) Tylenol’s manufacturer, to learn how to handle crises. The culprits are still unknown almost 40 years later.

Successful Crisis Management: Full Responsibility, Proactive Stance

In 1982, Tylenol commanded 35 percent of the over-the-counter analgesic market in America. This over-the-counter painkiller was the drugmaker’s best-selling product, and it represented nearly 17 percent of J&J’s profits. When seven people died from consuming the tainted drug, Time magazine wrote of the tragedy’s victims,

Twelve-year-old Mary Kellerman of Elk Grove Village took Extra-Strength Tylenol to ward off a cold that had been dogging her. Mary Reiner, 27… had recently given birth to her fourth child. Paula Prince, 35, a United Airlines stewardess, was found dead in her Chicago apartment, an open bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol nearby in the bathroom. Says Dr. Kim [the chief of critical care at Northwest Community Hospital]: “The victims never had a chance. Death was certain within minutes.”

A panic ensued about how widespread the contamination may be. Moreover, Americans started to question the safety of over-the-counter medications.

Advertising guru Jerry Della Femina declared Tylenol dead:

I don’t think they can ever sell another product under that name. There may be an advertising person who thinks he can solve this, and if they find him, I want to hire him because then I want him to turn our water cooler into a wine cooler.

The ‘Grand-Daddy’ of Good Crisis Response

  • J&J acted quickly, with complete candidness about what had happened, and immediately sought to remove any source of danger based on the worst-case scenario. Within hours of learning of the deaths, J&J installed toll-free numbers for consumers to get information, sent alerts to healthcare providers nationwide, and stopped advertising the product. J&J recalled 31 million bottles of Tylenol capsules from store shelves and offered replacement products free of charge in the safer tablet form. J&J did not wait for evidence to see whether the contamination might be more widespread.
  • J&J’s leadership was in the lead and seemed in full control throughout the crisis. James Burke, J&J’s chairman, was widely admired for his leadership to pull Tylenol capsules off the market and his forthrightness in dealing with the media. (The Tylenol crisis led the news every night on every station for six weeks.)
  • J&J placed consumers first. J&J spent more than $100 million for the recall and relaunch of Tylenol. The stock had been trading near a 52-week high just before the tragedy, dropped for a time, but recovered to its highs only two months later.
  • J&J accepted responsibility. Burke could have described the disaster in many different ways: as an assault on the company, as a problem somewhere in the process of getting Tylenol from J&J factories to retail stores, or as the acts of a crazed criminal.
  • J&J sought to ensure that measures were taken to prevent as far as possible a recurrence of the problem. J&J introduced tamper-proof packaging (supported by an expanded media campaign) that would make it much more difficult for a similar incident to occur in the future.
  • J&J presented itself prepared to handle the short-term damage in the name of consumer safety. That, more than anything else, established a basis for trust with their customers. Within a year of the disaster, J&J’s share of the analgesic market, which had fallen to 7 percent from 37 percent following the poisoning, had climbed back to 30 percent.

Business Principles Should Hold True in Good Times and Bad

When the second outbreak of poisoning occurred four years after the first, Burke went on national television to declare that J&J would only offer Tylenol in caplets, which could not be pulled apart and resealed without consumers knowing about it.

Burke received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000. He was named one of history’s ten most outstanding CEOs by Fortune magazine in 2003. In Lasting Leadership: What You Can Learn from the Top 25 Business People of Our Times (2004,) Burke emphasized,

J&J credo has always stated that the company is responsible first to its customers, then to its employees, the community and the stockholders, in that order. The credo is all about the consumer. [When those seven deaths occurred,] the credo made it very clear at that point exactly what we were all about. It gave me the ammunition I needed to persuade shareholders and others to spend the $100 million on the recall. The credo helped sell it.

Trust has been an operative word in my life. It embodies almost everything you can strive for that will help you to succeed. You tell me any human relationship that works without trust, whether it is a marriage or a friendship or a social interaction; in the long run, the same thing is true about business.

Idea for Impact: A Crisis Makes a Leader

The first few days after any disaster or crisis can be a make-or-break time for a company’s and its leaders’ reputation. The urgency experienced during a crisis often gives leaders the go-ahead to enact change faster than ever before.

Admittedly, the Tylenol case study is more clear-cut than most crises because, from the get-go, it is clearly evident that criminals, not Johnson & Johnson, were responsible for the poisoning and the withdrawal of Tylenol from stores was comparatively easier to execute.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The Biggest Disaster and Its Aftermath // Book Summary of Serhii Plokhy’s ‘Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy’
  2. Don’t Hide Bad News in Times of Crisis
  3. Two Leadership Lessons from United Airlines’ CEO, Oscar Munoz
  4. Books in Brief: ‘Flying Blind’ and the Crisis at Boeing
  5. Leadership is Being Visible at Times of Crises

“What Am I Sad About?”

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When you’re struggling with sadness, part of your feelings may involve experiencing a lot of distress and shame about how sad you feel.

You probably won’t even realize it’s happening, but you’ll feel like “I shouldn’t be this sad” and that “my sadness is a weakness.”

It shouldn’t always feel like it’s just you.

When you acknowledge your sadness, you can actually perceive how you’re tunneling yourself into more gloom. Then you could do a much better job of accepting your sadness as it is, as the Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke reminds in the masterpiece Letters to a Young Poet (1929):

How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races – the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are only princesses waiting for us to act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises before you larger than any you’ve ever seen, if an anxiety like light and cloud shadows moves over your hands and everything that you do. You must realize that something has happened to you; that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hands and will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.

Thinking through “What am I sad about?” can help you get happier

Try to redirect the blame from yourself and recognize that sadness is a natural and reasonable response to the miseries of the world—some of them personal, some collective.

Yes, believing in yourself in the face of self-doubt can be challenging. But the extent of sadness isn’t immutable.

You can trigger a vast shift in how you feel by dropping self-criticism and embracing a more kind, non-judgmental relationship with yourself. Sadness isn’t a state of sin.

  • Change “I can’t do this” to “this will be a challenge for me; it’s normal to feel anxious.
  • Accept “I hate this” with “this is a tough situation to handle, and I’m doing my best.”
  • Persuade yourself to substitute “I hate myself” with “I’m overwhelmed with low self-esteem at the moment, and I need to cheer myself as I would a friend.”
  • Instead of repenting, “I can’t believe it slipped my mind again,” let yourself off by acknowledging, “it’s difficult to balance so many things. Perhaps I need to let go of some of them.”

Idea for Impact: Befriending your feelings and not identifying with these feelings as your self can affirm not only who you are but also what you believe you can be. Even when you feel disturbed because you’re falling back into past patterns, bear in mind that simply being aware that you’ve retreated into going over the past is a precursor of growth. Self-awareness can pave the way to a great leap forward in your personal transformation.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The Power of Negative Thinking
  2. Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself
  3. Cope with Anxiety and Stop Obsessive Worrying by Creating a Worry Box
  4. Seven Ways to Let Go of Regret
  5. Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal

Inspirational Quotations #883

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The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

People need to learn to take everyone as they are.
—Dawn French (Welsh Comedienne, Actress)

Can you see the holiness in those things you take for granted—a paved road or a washing machine? If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul.
—Harold Kushner (American Jewish Religious Leader)

A kiss can be a comma, a question mark, or an exclamation point. That’s basic spelling that every woman ought to know.
—Mistinguett (French Dancer, Actress)

No nation has the right to make decisions for another nation; no people for another people.
—Julius Nyerere (Tanzanian Statesman)

To me, we must learn to spell the word RESPECT. We must respect the rights and properties of our fellowman. And then learn to play the game of life, as well as the game of athletics, according to the rules of society. If you can take that and put it into practice in the community in which you live, then, to me you have won the greatest championship.
—Jesse Owens (American Athlete)

Aging is not ‘lost youth’ but a new stage of opportunity and strength.
—Betty Friedan (American Feminist, Author)

Youth is, after all, just a moment, but it is the moment, the spark, that you always carry in your heart.
—Raisa Gorbacheva (Russian Activist)

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
—Peter Ustinov (British Actor, Playwright)

Man is stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by the dozens.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Essayist)

If you promise the moon, be able to deliver it.
—Byrd Baggett (American Self-Help Author)

Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough.
—Martin Amis (British Novelist)

Success is achievable without public recognition, and the world has many unsung heroes. The teacher who inspires you to pursue your education to your ultimate ability is a success. The parents who taught you the noblest human principles are a success. The coach who shows you the importance of teamwork is a success. The spiritual leader who instills in you spiritual values and faith is a success. The relatives, friends, and neighbors with whom you develop a reciprocal relationship of respect and support—they, too, are successes. The most menial workers can properly consider themselves successful if they perform their best and if the product of their work is of service to humanity.
—Michael DeBakey (American Surgeon)

General Electric Blame Must Be Shared: Summary of Ex-CEO Jeff Immelt’s ‘Hot Seat’

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Leadership is tough. Some things work out, and some don’t. Other things end up epic failures. But no company gets anywhere without trying.

In the fullness of time, when the company does well, as suggested by its stock price, such leadership attributes as optimism and foresight are heralded as brilliant. But when things go wrong, these very attributes are the first to get the blame.

“More complete telling of the truth”

Hot Seat: What I Learned Leading a Great American Company (2021) is former General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt’s response to the allegations that his ineffectiveness led to the collapse of the once-mighty company. It’s an engaging book that must be studied after Wall Street Journal reporters Thomas Gryta and Ted Mann’s worthwhile postmortem, Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric (2020; my summary.)

My legacy was, at best, controversial. GE won in the marketplace but not in the stock market. I made thousands of decisions impacting millions of people, often in the midst of blinding uncertainty and second-guessed by countless critics. I was proud of my team and what we’d accomplished, but as CEO, I’d been about as brilliant as I was lucky, by which I mean: too often I was neither.

Confluence of bad luck, bad timing, leadership mistakes

I’ve previously written a dissertation on what happened at General Electric (GE.) Immelt had a tough act to follow. Under the previous CEO, the exceptional Jack Welch, GE got spoiled by greed and got away with a lack of transparency.

Over the years Jack Welch had collected a group of idol worshippers and sycophants around and outside the company who fostered an unrealistic view of GE and of Jack himself.

Immelt was saddled with Welch’s doomed legacy, but Immelt failed to right-track it in his 16 years at the helm.

Early in his tenure as CEO, Immelt realized the scope of a potential disaster in GE Capital but couldn’t break its bad habits swiftly. In fact, Immelt went about pivoting the company around slow-growth industrial products. Still, as he did so, his strategy entailed relying on GE Capital to deliver easy profits. It was a hard addiction to break, and Immelt couldn’t discard GE Capital easily.

In the short term, GE Capital was our strategy. We had no other engines of growth. We had to keep our heads down and weather the scrutiny. … We would let the rest of GE Capital grow so that we could keep earnings on a steady path, while the industrial businesses could catch up.

On top, Immelt overpaid for acquisitions, most prominently for the French power generating equipment company Alstom. At the same time, his bet on fossil-fuel-based power equipment was spectacularly mistimed because market conditions deteriorated quickly.

In the final years, Immelt’s misfortunes, even in such previously thriving businesses as healthcare and transportation, piled on. When Immelt called Jack Welch after stepping down, Welch told him supportively, “We both know you never caught a break.”

Jeff Immelt Admits He Let Everybody Down.

Immelt’s Hot Seat is a fascinating account of what it takes to lead a significant global business in times of rapid change.

Immelt owns up his many mistakes with a certain self-awareness. He rebukes a few people while acknowledging he should have been more accountable for everything that happened under his watch. But Hot Seat is primarily a then-in-time rationale of his significant decisions.

Interestingly enough, Immelt doesn’t offer insightful misgivings for the lack of transparency in GE’s financial statements, his outsized compensation, and the mischaracterization of insurance charges and pension liabilities.

Be advised, though, there’re so many details in Hot Seat that are unknowable without a first-rate knowledge of GE’s people and business model, starting with the Welch era.

“Every job looks easy (until you’re the one doing it)”

Read Hot Seat: What I Learned Leading a Great American Company (2021.) General Electric’s fall is a complicated story. It deserves to be heard from insiders such as Immelt as it does from journalists and stockholders.

Hot Seat should leave you with a fair-minded assessment of General Electric, Jack Welch, Jeff Immelt, financial engineering, the conglomerate business model, and Wall Street-oriented capitalism itself. These, sadly, many people don’t understand or know completely.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Easy Money, Bad Deals, Poor Timing: The General Electric Debacle // Summary of ‘Lights Out’
  2. Book Summary: Jack Welch, ‘The’ Man Who Broke Capitalism?
  3. Innovation Without Borders: Shatter the ‘Not Invented Here’ Mindset
  4. General Electric’s Jack Welch on Acting Quickly
  5. The Checkered Legacy of Jack Welch, Captain of Quarterly Capitalism

The Data Never “Says”

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Data doesn’t say anything. Indeed, data can’t say anything for itself about an issue any more than a saw can form furniture, or a sauce can simmer a stew.

Data is inert and inanimate. Data doesn’t know why it was created. Data doesn’t have a mind of its own, and, therefore, it can’t infer anything.

Data is a necessary ingredient in judgment. It’s people who select and interpret data. People can turn it into insight or torture it to bring their agenda to bear. Data is therefore only as useful as its quality and the skills of the people wielding it.

Far more than we admit, subjectivity and intuition play a significant role in deciding how we collect, choose, process, explain, interpret, and apply the data. As entrepreneur Margaret Heffernan warns in Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril (2012,) “We mostly admit the information that makes us feel great about ourselves, while conveniently filtering whatever unsettles our fragile egos and most vital beliefs.”

In the hands of careless users, data can end up having the opposite effect its creators intended. All data is good or bad depending on how it’s employed in a compelling story and what end it’s serving—neither of which the data itself can control.

  • Don’t let data drive your conclusions. Let data inform your conclusions.
  • Don’t declare, “The data says,” (as in, “the stock market thinks.”) Data by itself cannot have a particular interpretation.
  • When you find data that seems to support the case you wish to make, don’t swoop on it without caution and suspicion. Data can be very deceptive when used carelessly.
  • Be familiar with the limitations of your data. Investigate if your data informs any other equally valid hypothesis that could propose an alternative conclusion.

Idea for Impact: Beware of the risk of invoking data in ways that end up undermining your message.

Wondering what to read next?

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  2. Question the Now, Imagine the Next
  3. In Praise of Inner Voices: A Powerful Tool for Smarter Decisions
  4. Making Tough Decisions with Scant Data
  5. Situational Blindness, Fatal Consequences: Lessons from American Airlines 5342

Inspirational Quotations #882

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Conflict… is a theme that has occupied the thinking of man more than any other, save only God and love.
—Anatol Rapoport (American Mathematical Psychologist)

Don’t tell a woman she’s pretty; tell her there’s no other woman like her, and all roads will open to you.
—Jules Renard (French Author, Diarist)

A population weakened and exhausted by battling against so many obstacles—whose needs are never satisfied and desires never fulfilled—is vulnerable to manipulation and regimentation. The struggle for survival is, above all, an exercise that is hugely time-consuming, absorbing and debilitating. If you create these “anti-conditions,” your rule is guaranteed for a hundred years.
—Ryszard Kapuscinski (Polish Journalist)

The fact that there is a general belief in a future life is no evidence of its truth.
—Clarence Darrow (American Lawyer)

People are never free of trying to be content.
—Murray Bookchin (American Political Thinker)

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
—Thomas Merton (American Trappist Monk)

We pass our life in deliberation, and we die upon it.
—Pasquier Quesnel (French Theologian)

You should talk to people who disagree with you and you should talk to people who are not in the same emotional situation you are.
—Daniel Kahneman (American-Israeli Psychologist, Economist)

The noble title of ‘dissident’ must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.
—Christopher Hitchens (Anglo-American Social Critic)

Vicissitude of fortune which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, but buries empires and cities in a common grave.
—Edward Gibbon (English Historian)

True courage is more a matter of intellect than of feeling.
—Steve Pavlina (American Motivational Speaker)

The anguish of the neurotic individual is the same as that of the saint. The neurotic, the saint are engaged in the same battle. Their blood flows from similar wounds. But the first one gasps and the other one gives.
—Georges Bataille (French Essayist, Intellectual)

He who loses money, loses much; He who loses a friend, loses much more; He who loses faith, loses all.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (American Humanitarian)

The universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden. Passions, greed, hatred, and lies; law, social institutions, justice, love, glory, heroism, and religion: these are its monstrous flowers and its hideous instruments of eternal human suffering.
—Octave Mirbeau (French Author)

The ultimate Path is without difficulty. Just avoid picking and choosing.
—Jianzhi Sengcan (Chinese-Buddhist Monk)

Leadership is Being Visible at Times of Crises

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It’s terrible optics for an elected official to leave his constituency while it’s in the midst of a crisis.

In a grave slip-up for an ambitious politician, Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s giving a lame excuse initially for his Cancún joint made him look insensitive. He was expected to stay and endure alongside his constituents, who were suffering from Texas’s recent freezing temperatures and blackouts.

Of course, Cruz didn’t do anything that hurt anybody, apart from drawing police resources away to shepherd him through the airport. Cruz’s argument—sensible in its own way—was that all he could do was be in regular communication with state and local officials who’re spearheading the crisis response. After all, Cruz has no formal power in the state administration.

As a comparison, King George and the Queen Mother declined to leave London as bombs shattered their city during World War II. As an expression of concern, and commitment to the Allied cause, they even visited sites destroyed during The Blitz of 1940.

Idea for Impact: Leadership means serving as an anchor during crisis times and being available, connected, and accessible during a crisis. Leaders can’t do everything, and they need to delegate responsibilities. However, entrustment should not entail emotional detachment.

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  3. How to … Declutter Your Organizational Ship
  4. Making Tough Decisions with Scant Data
  5. Don’t Hide Bad News in Times of Crisis

How to Avoid Magical Thinking

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Magical thinking remains a subtle impediment to making sound decisions. The more you examine yourself, the more you can reduce your tendency to indulge in it.

Discover the truth for yourself. Beware of the tendency to let others think for you. Don’t believe what your parents, teachers, counselors, mentors, priests, and authorities of all inclinations have taught you from an early age. (The best predictor of people’s spiritual beliefs is the religiosity of their parents.) Question others’ underlying premises and discover for yourself what’s reasonable. Force yourself to test for alternatives.

Don’t believe what you want to believe is true. Many people believe in UFOs and ghosts, even when there’s no credible verification for any visitation from outer space or dead souls haunting abandoned buildings. Often, misinformation is cunningly designed to evade careful analytical reasoning—it can easily slip under the radar of even the most well-informed people. Shun blind optimism.

Consciously identify your biases and adverse instincts. Psychologists have identified more than 100 cognitive biases that can get in the way of clear and rational thinking. Explore how those biases could come into play in your thinking. Try to determine their motive. Work to extricate yourself from them to the best of your ability.

Demand proof when the facts seem demonstrable. Remain intellectually agnostic toward what hasn’t been established scientifically or isn’t provable. If you can’t determine if something is true or it isn’t, suspend judgment. Beware of anecdotes—emotionally swaying stories in particular—they are the weakest form of evidence.

Don’t believe in something that isn’t true just because there’s a practical reason to. If you feel emotionally inclined to believe in something because it gives you hope, comfort, and the illusion of control, identify your belief as just that. Faith is often no more than an inclination that’s not withstood the tests of reason. The process of faith is an absence of doubt. There’ll always be people who reject evolution for reasons that have little to do with evolution. Don’t act with more confidence in unproven theories than is justifiable.

Idea for Impact: Be wary of the influences that can put you at risk for magical thinking.

Give critical thinking and systematic evidence the central role in how you understand the world. Improving the criteria you use to judge the truth of things is difficult—but it’s of the essence. Have an unvarying, well-balanced degree of skepticism about everything, especially your own postulations.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Question Success More Than Failure
  2. In Praise of Inner Voices: A Powerful Tool for Smarter Decisions
  3. What the Rise of AI Demands: Teaching the Thinking That Thinks About Thinking
  4. Charlie Munger’s Iron Prescription
  5. Accidents Can Happen When You Least Expect Them: The Overconfidence Effect

Inspirational Quotations #881

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Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle.
—Pope John Paul II (Polish Catholic Religious Leader)

There is an increasing awareness of the interrelatedness of things. We are becoming less prone to accept an immediate solution without questioning its larger implications.
—Arthur Erickson (Canadian Architect)

Good timber does not grow with ease:
The stronger wind, the stronger trees.
—Douglas Malloch (American Poet, Short-story Writer)

For, although he didn’t know it, to him work was a sort of intoxication which gave him a glowing health and plenty of easy sleep.
—Mulk Raj Anand (Indian Novelist, Critic)

A few heart-whole, sincere, and energetic men and women can do more in a year than a mob in a century.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Monk, Mystic)

There comes with old age a time when the heart is no longer fusible or malleable, and must retain the form in which it has cooled down.
—Sheridan Le Fanu (Irish Novelist)

If the mind loves solitude, it has thereby acquired a loftier character, and it becomes still more noble when the taste is indulged in.
—Wilhelm von Humboldt (German Statesman, Scholar)

All our religion is but a false religion, and all our virtues are mere illusions and we ourselves are only hypocrites in the sight of God, if we have not that universal charity for everyone—for the good, and for the bad, for the poor and for the rich, and for all those who do us harm as much as those who do us good.
—John Vianney (French Catholic Priest)

Life is short and often stingy; feast the heart with what it craves, short of cruelty, and let the world wonder.
—Reynolds Price (American Novelist)

There are philosophies which are unendurable not because men are cowards, but because they are men.
—Ludwig Lewisohn (American Novelist, Essayist)

There are things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken of or written of, though it would be wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been.
—A. S. Byatt (English Novelist, Poet)

Gossip’s a nasty thing, but it’s sickly, and if people of good intentions will let it entirely alone, it will die, ninety-nine times out of a hundred.
—Booth Tarkington (American Novelist)

Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit.
—Felix Adler (American Philosopher, Educator)

The most reliable way to anticipate the future is by understanding the present.
—John Naisbitt (American Trend Analyst)